or a sledDorothy Wisecarver, an activist on and off the Lakewood City Council, died unexpectedly Nov. 25. She was 79.
Wisecarver had triple-bypass heart surgery three months ago and had been doing well, helping with campaigns and doing her own yard work, said her daughter, Lynn Wisecarver Johnson.
She died at her home. A memorial will be planned next spring.
“She was a powerhouse and almost fearless,” Johnson said.
Wisecarver served on the Lakewood Council from 1979 to 1985 and continually fought tax hikes and spending on things she thought were unnecessary. She often accused city leaders of being too closely involved with developers.
“She was a voice of and for democracy,” Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy said in a statement. He said they didn’t always agree on issues but he found her “to be the most delightfully warm and gracious person I ever met.”
Her involvement didn’t stop when she left the council. She continued dogging city officials about their spending. At a 2004 meeting, she spoke during a discussion the council was having about city finances.
“If city officials would quit giving the tax revenue to developers who don’t need it, we would not have these problems,” she said, according to a Denver Post story.
In 1997 she spoke against urban renewal, saying, “It’s very difficult to out-spend big money.”
She said she realized the city had to grow, but she believed city leaders were letting it happen with no planning.
“She wasn’t always in the good graces” of the chamber of commerce or real estate people, Johnson said.
In 1996, Wisecarver lambasted City Council members who were guests of a developer on a tour of malls. “I think it’s a wine-and-dine courtship,” she said, according to a Denver Post story.
Just last year, she stood outside grocery stores for hours at a time getting signatures on a petition for a ballot measure that would end the Lakewood grocery tax, said Natalie Menten, who described herself as a “citizen’s activist.” The effort was successful.
Wisecarver’s motto could have been “people have to have a voice” in government, said her daughter.
Johnson said that after a particularly contentious council meeting, one of the council members said to Wisecarver, “Doesn’t it bother you that no one on the council likes you?”
“It tells me I’m doing the right thing,” Wisecarver quipped, said her daughter.
Vicky Stack, a current council member, said Wisecarver “was a godsend.” She learned from Wisecarver, she said, that you “definitely cannot sit back and assume everything is fine. She was firm in her beliefs about how we (officials) lead,” Stack said. “I don’t know if we’ll have another like her.”
There was another side to Wisecarver: her love of kids and fun. She had a huge lot behind her house, so she would invite neighborhood kids to build forts on the lot. Often she went sledding with them.
One day, one of the little boys showed up at the Wisecarvers’ and asked, “Can Dorothy come out and play?” said her daughter.
Dorothy MacDonald was born Dec. 2, 1929, near Berryville, Va., and graduated from nearby Boyce, Va., high school. For 12 years she worked as a legal secretary.
She married David Wisecarver on Oct. 3, 1955. A mining engineer, he died in 2005.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her son-in-law, Robert Johnson, and grandson, Matthew Johnson.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
